Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description in this section is not prior art to the claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In recent years, with increasing awareness against security, use of an electronic device (information equipment) such as an image forming apparatus requires respective users to enter a user ID (user name) and password as user authentication. Such user authentication is executed by the respective electronic devices, and thus a user is required to remember as many user IDs and passwords as the number of the electronic devices.
On the other hand, password policy requires the number of characters (length) and character types (complexity such as a combination of alphabets and numerals) for the password in the user authentication, and thus a user is currently unable to set a simple password. Accordingly, this generates a situation where the user forgets the user ID and/or the password.
When the user forgets the user ID and/or the password, the user attempts to enter the user IDs and passwords multiple times to the electronic device within a range that the user remembers the user IDs and passwords. On the other hand, when the wrong user IDs or passwords are entered multiple times, the electronic device temporarily blocks (locks) information input by an account lock function. Then, the user is required to wait in front of the electronic device until the account lock is released, and thus this causes a problem that the user occupies this electronic device. Additionally, occupying the electronic device for a long period of time by the user causes a problem that a third person assumes that the user is performing unauthorized access.
With regard to such problems, there is disclosed a technique that provides a user who forgets a password with a hint for the user to remember this password.